How to Make a Boffer

Today I’ll be making a short sword, but this tutorial contains the information needed to make all sorts of different boffers.

Link to this tutorial as a Google Doc

Materials

You’ll need ½” PVC, Schedule 40, rated at least 480 PSI:

Plus pipe insulation, internal diameter ¾”, foam thickness at least ⅜”. You will also need ½” pipe insulation for the blade.

#variation #longerBoffer: For boffers 3’ or longer, you’ll use ¾” pipe and 1” pipe insulation, with ¾” pipe insulation for the blade.

You’ll also need ordinary duct tape, and optionally, two rolls of colored duct tape and electrical tape.

Now let’s get started! Here’s a big-picture overview of the boffer-making, or smithing, process:

And here’s a more detailed description of the recipe we’ll follow:

Cutting the Pipe

You can cut the PVC with an ordinary hacksaw or a fancy pipe cutter. Your boffer will be about 4” longer than the length of pipe that you cut, due to padding at the ends. Remember, if you want a boffer longer than 3’, use ¾” pipe!

Once the length of pipe is cut, the next step is to cap the sharp ends.

Mushroom Cap 1

First we’ll make a reinforced mushroom cap to protect the delicate foam padding from the ravages of the pipe. We first cut a piece of foam, overhanging the pipe by about ⅛” on either end:

Now we cut the stem of the mushroom cap. Starting at the seamed end of the insulation, cut about halfway up the foam on either side to make a stem whose width is the inside diameter of the pipe.

Now wrap the stem with a piece of tape ripped in half lengthwise (a half-strip):

Next, reinforce the inside corners with half-strips:

Next, prepare some half-strips like this. These will affix the mushroom cap to the pipe.

Squish the stem of the mushroom cap into the pipe. This might require some twisting.

The next part is a bit tricky--you might want more than two hands. Lay a medium half-strip across the long top edge of the mushroom cap. Using your thumb, press down on the top of the cap, hard.

Next, while keeping your thumb pressed firmly on top, fold the edges of the cap that the half-strip lays across, down firmly to the pipe, and tape them down. The idea here is to cover the sharp edges of the pipe with foam and tape. When these edges are down, use a short half-strip to fix the medium half-strip in place (the medium half-strip should be under a lot of tension).

Repeat the process, but this time place the medium piece of tape at 90 degrees to the last one. You’re taping down the other two edges of the mushroom cap. It should look like this:

Or this, but maybe not so tilted :)

Now you’re done. Whew! But wait, there are still two medium and two short half-strips left! These are for the pesky diagonals. Repeat the medium-short process two more times at 45s to your previous half-strips to bring the diagonals into line. Now things should look like this:

Finally, wrap the long pieces around the mushroom cap. Apply lots of pressure. The first piece is to push in all the foam that isn’t folded flat to the pipe’s edges. The second piece is lower down, and it reinforces the connection between the top of the mushroom cap, and the pipe.

The mushroom cap ends up looking like this:

Core Layer

The next step is to attach the core padding. First we mark the pommel and handle of the boffer, so that we know where the core shouldn’t go. Use your hand to mark the handle, and leave about 3” on the non-capped side of the pipe for the pommel. #variation #longerBoffer: If you’re making a longer boffer, you might want to consider a longer handle. I recommend 3 hands worth of handle for a longsword (3’-4.5’) and 5 hands of handle for a greatsword (4.5’ to 6’). Anything longer than 6’ will a) be very unwieldy b) require 1” PVC.

Next, we make double-sided tape to attach the core to the pipe. Hang a strip of duct tape from a rafter or window alcove:

Fold the edges in on themselves by thirds:

Continue this process, tucking right under left, until the entire strip is double-sided. Then wrap it around your boffer, starting at the handle mark. Try to avoid touching the entire strip--oil from your fingers weakens the adhesive. Instead, hold the double-sided tape far from the boffer and rotate the boffer to wrap the tape.

Next, cut your core foam padding. Cut it about 2” longer than the core area on the pipe that you just taped:

Attach the foam from the base.

Once the foam is around the pipe, reach inside the edges of the pipe and pull to tighten the gap in-between the edges. There may still be a gap at the top, where the mushroom cap is.

Don’t try to overstretch the foam to fill this gap. Instead, cut a piece of foam and lay it in:

Tape the resulting seam, and you’re good to go.

Compression Tip

We want our tip to be squishy. So we need a compression tip. We make this much like a mushroom cap. This time, the initial piece of foam we cut is as wide as the core layer’s diameter:

Again, we cut a stem, this time as wide as the inside diameter of the core layer foam. We want a tight fit, but not so tight that it distends the core layer foam into an oval shape.

And again, we wrap the step and reinforce the diagonals with half-strips:

We cut the core layer so that when the compression tip’s stem is inserted into the core layer fully, the bottom of the stem just touches the top of the mushroom cap. This way the tip doesn’t have room to bend from side to side when you’re stabbing. Note: the height of the mushroom cap stem is much less than 2”. I just told you to leave 2” earlier so that you’d leave 1”, not ½”.

Blade Layer

Our boffer is gonna be realistic! At least, it’s going to have a blade (“sharp”) edge and a flat (“dull”) edge. To make the blade layer, open the seam of a tube of ½” pipe insulation and cut it in half lengthwise (make a cut 180 degrees from the seam). I recommend making a few cuts, then checking if the two halves of insulation are roughly equal, then making a few cuts, then checking, and so on.

You’ll end up with this:

Normally, blades on swords only go one direction. But if we only did that, the tip could then wiggle in the perpendicular direction. So we use a small piece of blade to reinforce the tip in the perpendicular direction. Note that the blade folds, concave side down, over the curved edge of the compression tip, and that it is long enough to reach down to the place where the pipe is, under the blade layer.

The real blade simply crosses over the reinforcing blade. Attach it lightly with 4 strips of tape: 2 on each side, one for the base and one for the tip.

Pommel

#variation: If you want two blades, a double-sided sword, you can totally do that! Just ignore the rest of section Pommel. Instead, repeat all the previous steps, but on this side of the pipe.

You already know most of the recipe for attaching the pommel. First, you make another mushroom cap, exactly like the first, on the other end of the pipe. I know, it’s a pain...

Then you attach another piece of core insulation with sticky tape, exactly as you did before:

You fill in the gap with a custom-fitting piece of foam and tape the seam, like you did before:

Now things get different! Please, don’t be alarmed. We add a second core layer around the first. You can use ¾” insulation or 1” insulation for this.

Fill the (bigger) gap with another custom piece of foam and tape the seams:

Protective (and Colorful) Taping

Finally, let’s add a protective layer of tape on the exterior of our boffer! First we’ll do the flat, then the blade, in two different colors.

General rules while taping: Push the tape into grooves such as the one between the blade and the core layer, so that it lies flat everywhere. Then stretch the tape lightly to cover other areas. To tape the flat, first cover the bulge created by the reinforcing half-blade. Push the tape into the crevasse between the half-blade and the core, don’t stretch the tape over it:

Now tape the grooves between the blade and the core. Angle the tape strips as I do to reflect the fact that the boffer gets thicker from base to tip:

Repeat on the other side of the boffer (the other flat).

Now for the blade:

I recommend pressing the center of the tape down first, then smoothing to the edges. Now the tip (you can do this with one single piece of tape, but it’s harder).